'Django' really about blaxploitation

1:42 PM,
Jan. 16, 2013

Written by

DeWayne Wickham

To understand the controversy surrounding the movie Django Unchained is to know not just that "all art is political," but also that politics can often be a blood sport - both on and off the big screen.

In the case of Quentin Tarantino's dark film about a runaway-slave-turned-bounty-hunter who will do anything to free his wife from slavery, the on-screen images produce a roller coaster ride of humor and gore. It's because of the off-screen politics of making such a movie, in a nation still unwilling to fully admit to the depth of its complicity with slavery and the resulting Jim Crow century, that ...